South Africa: Clamp Down On Cross-Border Wildlife Smuggling


White River — More than 100 wild animals and plants were seized during a two-month operation aimed at combating cross-border trade in great apes and other wildlife.

Director of enforcement and facilitation at the World Customs Organization (WCO), Gaozhang Zhu, told journalists at a media briefing in White River, Mpumalanga, that the animals and plants were seized during a trans-regional operation between January and February.

"Being on the frontline at international border crossings enables customs to play a critical role in the fight against transnational organised crime, which is more often than not linked to the smuggling of endangered species," said Zhu.

He said the international community and governments were growing concerned about increasing wildlife crime and associated corruption.

He said the main objective of the operation was to raise awareness, encourage effective enforcement and cooperation among identified international agencies and customs administrations in line with the convention on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora.

The operation was conducted within the framework of Project Great Apes and Integrity (Gapin), a Swedish government-financed project designed to stem illegal trade while cracking down on corrupt practices that helped to fuel illicit trafficking.

WCO secretary general Kunio Mikuriya said Project Gapin resulted in the seizure of more than 22 tonnes and 13 000 pieces of protected wildlife covering over 31 species, including one live monkey, two dead monkeys (Macaques caught as bush meat), 295 pieces of ivory statues, jewellery and chopsticks, 57kg of raw ivory, four rhino horns, 4 726kg of pangolin meat, 323 seahorses and one leopard skin.

"(Improving) export controls on protected wildlife through capacity building and raising the awareness of front line customs officers on the dangers posed by corruption has ensured the success of this important trans-regional operation," said Mikuriya.

He said the WCO and its 177 member customs administrations remained committed to protecting the earth's natural heritage through effective border enforcement.

Fourteen African countries participated in the operation, supported by 25 countries in Asia and Europe, WCO Regional Intelligence Liaison Offices, Asian Wildlife Enforcement Network, Lusaka Agreement Task Force, Pan African Sanctuary Alliance, and national cities management authorities, wildlife enforcement agencies and in some countries, the police.

Mikuriya said detentions were also made in Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda and South Africa, four of the 15 countries that form part of Project Gapin.

The balance of arrests were made in countries outside Africa, such as Belgium, China, Czech Republic, France, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam.

"Some of the countries participating in the training session made a number of significant interceptions during the actual operation and moreover, Vietnam Customs seized 1.2 tonnes of ivory shipped from Tanzania via Singapore just prior to the start of the operation," Mikuriya said.

It is estimated that illegal trade in wildlife is, in term of profits, the second largest criminal activity next to narcotics smuggling.

"Almost all great ape populations continue to decline drastically, severely threatened by the combined effects of hunting and illegal export to third countries. The population of chimpanzees across Western Africa has decreased by 75 percent in the past 30 years," Mikuriya said.

quote:

Director of enforcement and facilitation at the World Customs Organization (WCO), Gaozhang Zhu

I hate to be judgmental, but considering their abysmal record in enforcing the laws against the smuggling of wildlife products, having a Chinese bureaucrat as the Director of Enforcement does not fill me with confidence.

However, the article does not say if Gaozhang Zhu is a ChiCom or not, but I would be surprised if he was not. However, the good news is that the WCO is not part of the United Nations.

World Customs Organization history

quote:

WCO secretary general Kunio Mikuriya said Project Gapin resulted in the seizure of more than 22 tonnes and 13 000 pieces of protected wildlife covering over 31 species, including one live monkey, two dead monkeys (Macaques caught as bush meat), 295 pieces of ivory statues, jewellery and chopsticks, 57kg of raw ivory, four rhino horns, 4 726kg of pangolin meat, 323 seahorses and one leopard skin.

I can accept the numbers and statistics quoted as, well, let's just say "possible'. But 4726 kg of pangolin meat is hard to swallow! nThe total body mass of a pangolin is given as 7.2 kg. Typically for a great number of animals a very rough eatimate is that "carcas mass" is about 50% of live mass. If this rough guide is applied it means the meat of 1313 pangolins was confiscated.

Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of handling meat from hunted animals will have a problem envisioning the scale of slaugher and the logistics involved in getting the "meat" of 1313 animals together. A very rare and secretive animal like a pangolin in thousands, yet some other species listed in ones and twos or a few at most? Does not seem right. Not impossible, but it just seems fishy to me.

Maybe I'm just over sceptical and pangolin does actually occur in much larger numbers than I thought?

In good hunting.

Andrew McLaren.

If they are worth $175 a kilo, 1313 pangolins is probably just a drop in the bucket. These ChiCom bastards are a plague on our planet, just like locusts.

~ Alan


Illegal Pangolin Trade Threatens Rare Species

Chinese demand for the pangolin, a scale-covered anteater, is forcing the endangered animals closer to extinction, wildlife organizations announced this week.

Pangolins are disappearing in China and across their ranges in East and Southeast Asia. They have become the most frequently seized mammal in Asia's illegal wildlife trade, as smugglers sell the creatures to meet culinary and medicinal demand.

The pangolin decline comes despite national legislation that bans hunting the species throughout its Southeast Asia range. Meanwhile, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) prohibits the pangolin trade across borders.

Chris Shepherd, acting director for Southeast Asia for the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC, said the pangolin plight reflects the difficulty in enforcing the international wildlife convention.

"The ongoing massive-scale trade in these species does highlight a failure of the Convention," Shepherd said. "CITES is a very useful conservation tool, but like any tool, it is only useful when effectively used."

Pangolin researchers gathered earlier this month in Singapore and concluded that increased demand from China has led to "great declines" in pangolin populations across Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. Some researchers concluded that pangolins from Indonesia and Malaysia now supply the bulk of East Asian markets. The panel said traders are importing pangolins into China from as far away as Africa, where four of the eight known species of the anteater live.

Pangolins have been a staple of traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years, but growing human populations and greater wealth across China have increased demand. Pangolin fetuses, scales, and blood are used in medicine, the meat is considered a delicacy, and stuffed pangolins are sold as souvenirs.

The decline in pangolin populations and intensified efforts to curb the illegal trade have led to rising prices for pangolin products - further enticing organized crime rings to smuggle the endangered animals. A kilogram of pangolin scales that earned only 80 yuan (US$10) in the early 1990s would now yield 1,200 yuan ($175) on the black market, according to Zhang Yue, a wildlife trade expert in China's State Forestry Administration.

An estimated 25,000-50,000 wild pangolins lived in China in 2000, according to a national survey. Populations in Guangdong and Hunan provinces have since dropped as low as 10 percent of the 2000 estimate, and populations in Hainan, Henan, and Jiangsu provinces are likely extinct, according to a study led by Li Zhang, the technical director of Conservation International's China program.

Tallies of the creatures are generally unreliable, however, due to their solitary and nocturnal habits. The International Union of Conservation of Nature acknowledges that there is "very little information available on the population status anywhere in the species' range." But the organization concurs that pangolin populations are decreasing.

"Trade surveys and interviews with hunters and traders in many parts of Southeast Asia have indicated that populations of pangolins are in serious decline and in many locations are gone altogether," Shepherd said.

According to data on wildlife seizures, at least 49,662 pangolins have been smuggled from Indonesia since 2002. In Thailand, border officials seized 7,734 pangolins between 2003 and June 2008.

Most governments in the pangolins' range have implemented bans on hunting or trading the animals, and violators face harsh penalties with potential imprisonment. Range countries acknowledge, however, that enforcement is generally weak due to a lack of wildlife management personnel and funding.

Shepherd said that even in countries with strict penalties, violators are rarely punished to the full extent of the law. "Penalties need to serve as a deterrent and until this happens, the trade will continue," he said.

China is a member of CITES, but the country permits some pangolin consumption to respect medicinal traditions. Pangolin scales may be used in clinical treatment and in the manufacturing of patented Chinese medicines. Both uses are permitted only in designated hospitals, not through retail sales.

To control the pangolin influx from Indonesia - where Shepherd said that middlemen regularly establish "buying stations" in villages before shipping the anteaters to China - Indonesian wildlife officials have proposed a legalized trade based on a quota system. The market would be strictly monitored and limited to a period of three to five years.

Gono Semiadi, a biologist at the Indonesia Institute for Sciences, said at a panel during the Singapore conference that a legal market would allow wildlife officials to create a rivalry between legal and illegal traders, enabling officials to better understand trade routes and trafficking data.

Given the high market value for pangolins, continued demand, and difficulty in enforcing wildlife laws in Indonesia, some conservationists are concerned that traders would illegally exceed the legal pangolin exchange quota.

"Managing a regulated trade and preventing illegal trade would prove extremely difficult, especially since the illegal trade network is so well organized," Shepherd said. "The focus should be purely on stopping the illegal trade. Allowing a regulated trade would only open a loophole for laundering of illegally sourced pangolins.

if anyone thinks they are going to put a stop to idiotic demands of 3-4 billion Chinese-well, good luck. when your citizenry is stupid enough to believe that matted hair( which basically is all that rhino horn amounts to) has magical properties, you will never stop the trade. when the average moron in China wakes up and realizes that this is the 21st century, things might change. BUT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN ANYTIME SOON!!!!!!!!